Outsourcing Watch: No Net Domestic Jobs?

A startling new study shows that all of the growth in the employed population in the United States over the past few years can be attributed to recently arrived immigrants.

The study found that from the beginning of 2001 through the first four months of 2004, the number of new immigrants who found work in the U.S. was 2.06 million, while the number of native-born and longer-term immigrant workers declined by more than 1.3 million.

The study, from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, is further confirmation that despite the recovery from the recession of 2001, American families are still struggling with serious issues of joblessness and underemployment.

The study does not mean that native-born workers and long-term immigrants are not finding jobs. The American workplace is a vast, dynamic, highly competitive arena, with endless ebbs and flows of employment. But as the study tallied the gains and losses since the end of 2000, it found that new immigrants acquired as many jobs as the other two groups lost, and then some.

Andrew Sum, the director of the center and lead author of the study, said he hoped his findings would spark a long-needed analysis of employment and immigration policies in the U.S. But he warned against using the statistics for immigrant-bashing.

"We need a serious, honest debate about where we are today with regard to labor markets," said Professor Sum, whose work has frequently cited the important contributions immigrants have made. The starkness of the study's findings, he said, is an indication that right now "there is something wrong."

I believe this is the press release and PDF document of the report that Herbert is reffering to right here.

New study reveals that the nation’s foreign-born make up more than half of the
labor force growth between 2000 and 2003

Despite the recession, lackluster job growth, and the nation’s increasingly strict rules governing immigration post 9-11, America’s burgeoning population of foreign-born generated the bulk of the nation’s labor market growth since 2000, amplifying a trend identified in the 1990s, according to a new report from Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies and researchers Andrew Sum, Paul Harrington and Ishwar Khatiwada.

Their findings show that nationally, between 50 and 58 percent of the growth in the labor force was due to new foreign immigrants who came to the U.S. between 2000 and 2003, an all-time historical high for the country. During that three-year period, between 1.7 and 2 million immigrants came to the U.S., many from Mexico and Central America.

Well well well, that would explain the previous information that most of the jobs being created are part time. Not only are they part time but they're jobs for recent immigrants. I'm not against immigration. My family is a family of immigrants. However what this points out that the job recovery has not been a real job recovery at all.